With recent updates to Radeon graphics card drivers, Homeworld 2 ships have been failing to render making them invisible. The solution is to add the -noVBO command line switch which will disable Vertex Buffer Objects when starting the game. To do this:

Right click on your Homeworld 2 shortcut and select properties.

In the target field add a space and then add -noVBOExample: C:\Program Files\Sierra\Homeworld 2\Bin\Release\Homeworld2.exe -noVBO

Once you’ve added this switch to the shortcut start the game from the shortcut and you shouldn’t have any more invisible ships.

User Angellus posted these images of the problem on this relicnews forum thread as a sample of what the problem might look like.

If you experience Homeworld 2 camera and movement lag/choppiness when you zoom in on ships or asteroids, you most likely have one of the following: an out of date video card driver, a cracked exe, or an integrated graphics card. There are a few solutions that have been known to work, that I’ve posted below. Let me know which one works for you!

Enable Vsync. In the game options enable Vsync. This is one of the most common fixes.

Turn detail geometry off, and set hyperspace quality to low. Visually, the difference is minimal and on some machines (especially integrated graphics) this will get rid of the lag completely

Update your video drivers. Outdated video drivers might be incompatible with the game and could be causing the lag/choppiness.

Force Homeworld 2 to use your GPU instead of integrated graphics. On some newer machines; laptops especially, you may have to manually set the game to run using your NVidia GPU (if you have one) instead of the integrated graphics card. To do this follow the steps in this stackexchange post.

Re-install. If you’re using a cracked exe file it might be the cause of your problems. These files are user generated and offer no guarantee of quality. Try re-installing and running the game from the CD again.

If you’ve followed the above steps and are still having Homeworld 2 camera and movement lag issues, please post in the comments below. To increase your chances of a solution being found include as much detail as possible (which version of the game you’re running, what operating system you have, what video card you have and steps to reproduce the issue). Screenshots are also very useful!

Homeworld 2 save files are located within the Homeworld 2 installation directory. Single player saves will be located in the following folder:Homeworld 2\Bin\Profiles\xxx\Campaign\ASCENSIONNote – in the above path xxx is your profile name, most likely profile1.

Homeworld 2 suffers from an annoying flaw than can allow you to set your resolution to one that is wider than your screen – cutting off the buttons needed to change the resolution back. The maddening result will look something like this:

If for whatever reason you find that you’ve ended up in this unhappy place and made your Homeworld 2 resolution too wide for your screen and can’t change it back anymore, try following these steps:

Right click on your Homeworld 2 shortcut and select properties

In the target field add the following options after the location of the .exe file:-w 640 -h 480
e.g. “C:\Program Files\Homeworld 2\Bin\Release\Homeworld2.exe” -w 640 -h 480. This will force your game to run at a low resolution which should fit on any modern screen.

Start the game from this shortcut. Once the game starts change the resolution in-game to the one you want and make sure to remove these options from your shortcut when you’re done otherwise they will continue to force the game to run at this low resolution.

See hw2wiki for a full list of command line parameters. You can also check relicnews for related posts: post 1post 2

If you’re still having issues changing the resolution please post the steps you’ve followed and what the result is!

Homeworld 2 can be played fairly easily online using Hamachi. Two basic steps will be required for this to work:

Install Hamachi and join a network with your friend(s). Follow the steps on the Hamachi setup page, on how to install Hamachi and create and join networks.

Join a game through LAN. With all of your friends in the same Hamachi network and online, go to the Homeworld 2 LAN menu and have one person in the network host the game. The rest should see the game appear automatically here. If you don’t see the game go back the multiplayer and select the “Direct TCP/IP” menu and enter the host’s hamachi ip (not their local or WAN ip).

If you’re still having trouble connecting you most likely have a firewall issue. Hamachi can confuse your firewall because it is recognized as a connection to an outside network on some operating systems, especially Windows 7. Try adding Hamachi as an exception to your firewall settings, but if that still doesn’t work you can turn off firewall for Public Networks in Control Panel/Windows Firewall. MAKE SURE that this doesn’t open your system up to outside threats. Do this at your own risk!

If nothing here helped you play Homeworld 2 over Hamachi, please post the issue that you’re having and describe the steps you followed in as much detail as possible.